A week on, and we are reflecting on our trip to MENT Festival, Slovenia…
Some of team Capsule, Lisa Meyer (CEO / Artistic Director) and Kate Self (Exec Producer) recently attended MENT Festival and Professional Conference, 12 – 15 February in Ljubljana, Slovenia.
Whether you’re a music enthusiast or industry professional, MENT offers a platform for discovering new sounds and connecting with the music scene. The festival serves as a meeting point for artists, music professionals and music lovers, and 2025 was their eleventh edition.
The festival itself featured a fabulously eclectic line-up with artists from all over Europe, playing in a range of venues in Ljubljana. For us, it’s always great to get out and explore a new city, in particular for us to get in and see a variety of venues up close. Our favourites were Kino Šiška, an incredible concert venue with a larger hall and small sister hall, and a series of multipurpose communal areas – great for the many receptions and breakout sessions hosted. And of course, the castle (!) which houses several venue spaces varying in sizes in amongst the beautifully renovated historic fortress. Made even more exciting by the fact that access is possible via an incredible glass-sided funicular railway – the views are spectacular, but for anyone who doesn’t enjoy heights, you might prefer to access these venues on foot, via the winding hillside pathway instead.
The conference, 13-14 February comprised of a rich programme of panels, workshops and interviews. It was great to hear from a real range of professionals. Supersonic was represented via a panel called Music Discovery – The Headliner. Moderated by Magdalene Angulska (MH Agency, Poland), Lisa spoke with fellow festival Director Bronne Keesmaat (Rewire, Netherlands). The session was largely designed to explore the ways in which our festivals carefully crafts it unique curatorial vision. The session examined programme development and the different ways we work with artists, keeping diversity and audiences in mind, as well as our shared key challenges.
With a full, but well-paced conference programme, we were able to see a good number of other sessions, as well as fit in some face to face meetings too. There was such a rich array of topics up for discussion which has given the team plenty of food for thought.
We are so grateful to the team at MENT for providing such a brilliant festival programme and for their hospitality, to the many and varied folks we had conversations with whilst in town, and to WM Growth for the financial support which made this vital research trip possible.
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